I see it every day: People trying to create a home that somebody else tells them they should have. I don't care if it's a magazine or a bossy friend - when somebody says, 'This is what's elegant, this is what's trendy,' if it doesn't represent you, you're not going to be happy.
Interpretation
True happiness comes from creating a home that reflects your own identity, not one dictated by external influences.
In this quote, Nate Berkus highlights the importance of personal authenticity in creating a space that genuinely represents who you are, rather than conforming to the often arbitrary standards set by others. He emphasizes that when people follow trends or advice that do not resonate with their true selves, they are likely to feel unfulfilled and unhappy in their own environment.
In practice
In a talk about interior design, you could share this quote to emphasize the importance of personal style.
About 80 percent of the stuff I live with is old. I like letting things take on the character they’re meant to have by really being used. … when you own things that have the imperfections they deserve, that they’ve earned from a well-lived life, it frees you from feeling as though they’re untouchable.
I believe your home tells a story about who you are and who you aspire to be. We represent ourselves through the things we own. I don't believe in trends. I believe in collecting things that you connect with. We should surround ourselves with things we care about, that have meaning.
The lesson, I suppose, is that none of us have much control over how we will be remembered. Every life is an amalgam, and it is impossible to know what moments, what foibles, what charms will come to define us once we're gone. All we can do is live our lives fully, be authentically ourselves and trust that the right things about us, the best and most fitting things, will echo in the memories of us that endure.
We only have so long to play in the dirt and ask questions of rivers.
The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.
How terrible would it have been if I had come out with some watered-down version of who I am? People fell in love with the real me, and I still feel blessed that that was how the journey began.
In spite of everything life is not without hope.
I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, and in spite of what most people might have expected from a young girl growing up deaf, life for me was like one long episode of The Brady Bunch. Despite whatever barriers were in my way, I imagined myself as Marcia Brady skating down the street saying “hi” to everyone, whether they knew me or not.
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